Several readers made the comment that the burqa is objectionable because it portrays women as non-persons. Is this plausible? Isn’t our poetic tradition full of the trope that eyes are the windows of the soul? And I think this is just right: contact with another person, as individual to individual, is made primarily through eyes, not nose or mouth.

Seriously? Contact with another person, as individual to individual, is made through the face – not through the eyes or the nose or the mouth, but the whole face. That’s why men don’t wear burqas: men want to be free to interact with people (that is, in this context, men) in the normal natural way. They also want to be free to breathe, eat, drink, hear, look around – they want to be free to do all the usual things one does with one’s face.

There’s something oddly typical about that ridiculous, sentimental claim. Nussbaum is brilliant, but she also has this strange blindness and tendency to sentimentalize. It could be that having a lot of New York Times readers commenting on her posts will teach her something.

Well, that’s another thing – it’s a really dopy myth that the eyes are the bit that communicates. The eyes themselves don’t tell you a damn thing; the skin around them tells you a certain amount, but the mouth tells you at least as much. In short, yes you really do need the whole face. Nussbaum is just goofy sometimes. (And given that she was once an actor, she should know better!)

Ah — but I forgot, pupil dilation does convey information concerning arousal/affection in some situations. This is a trick I sometimes use to tell whether or not my friends are mad at me. So that’s a window to the soul, in an awkward sense of “soul”.

Notably, this helped Cal Lightman (played by Eli Roth on “Lie to Me”) discover important information from a paraplegic cop about his feelings towards his wife right before the cop expired. Much more informative than King novels.

Agreed that the face is our main organ of interaction. That said, I can’t get on board with banning the burqua or anything that covers anybody, except in circumstances (e.g., court, applying for driver’s licenses, etc.) that require a face to be shown. Yes, it’s certainly a garment that oppresses women, but to ban it means banning religious symbols in public. And that’s wrong. The arguments for banning it are contrived.

Let’s face it–the only reason this is being done is because it’s an Islamic thing, and Europeans are worried about the incursion of Islam in their countries. I don’t like Islam any more than any other religion (in fact, it’s one of the most harmful and insidious of faiths), but we can’t simply ban it because we don’t like it.

I’m inclined to agree with Nussbaum that there is no justification for a legal ban on religious dress, and I find her arguments persuasive. However, she seems to want to avoid any discussion of coercion. This is simply embarrassing:

I think that emotional coercion to wear a burqa, applied to an adult woman (threats of withdrawal of affection, for example, but not physical violence) is like this, and should be dealt with by friends and family, not by the law.

Yeah, that would be like this, if it corresponded in any way to reality. But Nussbaum knows that dress is enforced with the threat of violence, and it is disingenuous for her to go so out of her way to avoid acknowledging it.

Now, Ben, you’re not going to get me that way; nobody could take the infallibility of Lightman seriously, and I wasn’t thinking you did. I didn’t fall of the beer truck yesterday you know. :- )

Jerry, no, I’m not a fan of the burqa ban either…but on the other hand I think there are some serious (and non-invidious) reasons for favoring it, and I think Nussbaum fuzzes over a lot of things in her argument.

Oh she’s at your skool, of course; perhaps you bump into her now and then. Well…she’s a sentimentalist about religion all the same.

Thats surprising. Why not? The burqa is not like any other religious symbol (because it is meant only for women and also the reasoning behind having to wear a burqa is so horribly wrong. ), and while some women may voluntarily wear it, some dont and some are brainwashed into thinking its voluntary.

Having seen the above done to an eight year old girl, perhaps Im biased. Im always dismayed that Islamic women don’t ask the males to cover their eyes if they cant bear to see a woman’s face/hair/bare arms or whatever.

‘Notably, this helped Cal Lightman (played by Eli Roth on “Lie to Me”) discover important information from a paraplegic cop about his feelings towards his wife right before the cop expired. Much more informative than King novels.’

Ah, but as he left the room he admitted to a colleague he’d actually read remorse from the wife.

Still, I oppose the ban because it isn’t the State’s duty to decide what people wear and a ban would punish (fine? imprison? what?) the wearer (i.e. women, almost exclusively) not the husband or the ‘community’ which dictates that she wears it.

I would just like to second Mona Elthawy – she always has smart things to say. Her recent oped in the <a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071604356.html”>Washington Post</a> is well worth a read.

A sample:

“The French ban has been condemned as anti-liberal and anti-feminist. Where were those howls when niqabs began appearing in European countries, where for years women fought for rights? A bizarre political correctness tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women’s rights.”

I’m with Jerry, though I see it more as a free expression thing more than a freedom of religion thing. You should be able to express yourself pretty much how you like on the public streets (perhaps leaving aside truly extreme behaviour that would shock and inconvenience almost anyone around you, such as actually having sex on said streets). If you want to wear a string bikini (or nothing at all), fine. We’ll have to deal with it. If you want to wear your rumpled pajamas, likewise. And likewise, if you want to wear a tent-plus-letterbox to express your allegiance to Islam, or to a sick moral code that you subscribe to, or to express your hatred of Western freedoms.

But that doesn’t mean that private shopowners should be forced to admit you onto their property dressed in any of the above ways. They should be able to maintain a reasonable dress code on their own property. It also doesn’t mean that parents should be able to require their children to dress in drastic and potentially self-harmful ways. Likewise, I have no problem with public schools having a dress code that requires neat casual clothing and forbids, among other things, both burkas and bikinis.

But, yes, an adult over 18, or maybe even what I sometimes call a “baby adult” over, say 15 or 16, should be able to express herself pretty much however she likes on the public streets at her own risk of getting laughed at, or just looked at as if she’s a nutcase. I won’t be getting behind proposals for a ban on wearing the burka, but nor do I support a positive right to wear it in all circumstances, however inconvenient to others.

I am definitely opposed to a burqa ban, and I would also be opposed to Russell’s notion of “reasonable” dress codes by private shopowners that somehow conveniently target members of particular religions and ethnicities (and yes, niqabs do correlate with ethnicity, which makes it troubling). I also think the whole issue is overblown, since the French Secret Service has done studies showing that fewer than 2000 out of 5 million French Muslims veil. (The first number they came up with was 367!) I think people are apt to get hysterical when Islam is the subject: secularists and conservatives overestimate the threat to secularism, while multiculturalists and Islamophiles (for lack of a better word) overestimate the extent to which Muslims are discriminated against.

All of that said…how deeply silly is Nussbaum’s argument?!?!??!? She resorts to trite poetry about eyes being windows of the soul? Really? Like, seriously? Is this worth more than a giggle in response?

I would also be in favor of targeted police enforcement (as an extension, or a part, of a domestic violence unit) to prevent women and possibly minor girls from being violently forced to wear the burqa. I think that’s necessary to counteract the police tendency to view such violence as “private” and/or “cultural.”

The French ban has been condemned as anti-liberal and anti-feminist. Where were those howls when niqabs began appearing in European countries, where for years women fought for rights?

Are we honestly not recognizing the difference between the government enforcing dress codes and people deciding to follow dress codes? I care very much what the government considers its remit. I do not care so much what people choose to wear, as long as they are not being forced to do so.

On principle I tend to agree with Russell, but I have a problem in that allowing private shopowners to craft dress codes that deliberately infringe on certain religious or ethnic dress would result in disenfranchising minorities. In many areas it is not sustainable to grow one’s food, so what do the Muslims do for food when we allow markets to effectively ban them from the store? And before someone says “the free market will fix it” (not accusing you, Russell, but it’s what I’ve seen answered when discussing this before) the market could just as easily punish anyone serving certain minorities more when the bigots in the majority (that is, that are a subset of the majority, not saying most people are bigots) boycott serving “those other people”.

Ophelia; thanks for the referal to Mona Eltahawy. That article illustrated a rich irony.

Jerry, Russell:

Difficult for me to understand why you would view the burqa (niqab) as an “Islamic thing” when we know that a symptom of religion is that people tend to paste their fears onto that controlling philosophy. Men have always feared granting the same freedoms men enjoy to women. This clothing issue is less about religious freedom and more about gender equality, in my view.

The Islamic women who defend wearing the niqab as their religious choice are doing so because that is one of the few freedoms they have left to them after that same religion ( read: men in control) has taken away so many of their freedoms.

Historically, religion has usually resisted gender equality, or more generally, men have employed religion to gain power. I see this issue as just one more example of that trend.

Deeapk – well I didn’t say I favor the burqa, and I certainly don’t! And I don’t really oppose the ban either. I don’t favor it and I don’t oppose it. There are good reasons on each side, and so far I’ve been unable to pick one.

Heh , never meant to imply that you were in favor of the burkha, just the ban. The Burkha isnt really a religious symbol , its a male/ female thing , and since you feel strongly on that issue , I would have thought you support the ban.

@Russel

I see that you qualify your argument against the ban for adults and baby adults, but hasn’t clearly stated whether you would be in favor of a ban of niqab/ burkha / whatever for children(not just in schools where clearly there should never have been any issue)

@Jenavir

So you oppose a ban(in public) , but you are in favor of some sort of domestic police who will come into your private space to see how much coercion there is for wearing the burkha?

Sooner or later some idiot is going to use a burqa to hide from the security cameras while he holds up a convenience store. Then you will see the whole issue of covering the face in public in a new light.

Sooner or later some idiot is going to use a burqa to hide from the security cameras while he holds up a convenience store. Then you will see the whole issue of covering the face in public in a new light.

It will still be the same issue. Just because they used a burqa to hide from security cameras doesn’t mean they could not have used a different face covering. Face covering in general would be the problem, not the burqa.

It still stands that banning the burqa has the primary effect of inhibiting religious exercise, and thus would fail that prong of the Lemon test. A more generalized ban on face-obscuring clothing would at least not fail that particular prong, but as I see it specifically banning the burqa would be blatantly unconstitutional using current precedent in the US (although this may not remain true, as some have proclaimed the Lemon test to be reaching the end of its use — and of course this has no bearing on what the French do). And before someone brings up the KKK mask laws, their masks were used to hide themselves from view, not as fulfillment of any sort of religious doctrine or tradition.

I’m not clear on this issue, so perhaps someone more knowledgeable could enlighten me: To what extent is the niqab and burqa actually a religious practice as opposed to a cultural practice? There are certainly Islamic women who do not wear either — are they members of less-fundamentalist sects of Islam, or is this instead simply more liberal cultural practice? As I understood it, the requirement in the Quran is merely for women to dress modestly — is that correct?

@Deepak: er, no, any more than I’m in favor of some sort of domestic police that will spontaneously come into your house to see if you’re beating your wife.

If there’s evidence–allegations, or observed physical evidence–of wife-beating or daughter-beating, it should be investigated and treated severely. Theoretically, laws already provide for this. My point is that perhaps it should be treated more severely if the beating was part of a deliberate strategy to prevent the woman from participating in public life.

@Tulse: it’s largely a cultural practice, yes. It’s not Quranically required. But a minority of Muslims think it’s part of “Islam.”

Are you trying to argue that because it’s not Quranically required, it doesn’t deserve the special protections that free exercise of religion gets? That’s an intriguing argument and one that I haven’t seen before.

Well I made a similar argument about the much-repeated claim that treating gays as unequal is a “religious” practice, with reference in particular to Lilian Whosname, the Islington registrar who refused to marry gay couples. I pointed out that it’s not really a religious practice at all, it’s just dressed up as that; it’s really just a bigotry shared with other church-goers that has been dressed up as some sort of central religious belief and practice. If I remember correctly most people who replied said that was a crap argument…I forget why exactly. Perhaps because it makes no difference to anything.

Hahaha, yes, I remember you making that argument about gays–but have never seen it applied to burqas!

I think I’d like to see that, actually, just for the humor of it. You could have some pious Muslims seriously proclaiming that the pro-burqa Muslims are misstating the Quran, and that their imposition of their own cultural practices onto the Quran deserves no special protections.

Yeah, my argument isn’t that it’s required by Islam. There is no such thing as Islam in that sense – i.e. there are many, many positions that go under the name of “Islam”, some of which may require wearing of a letterbox and others do not. It’s no use deciding public policy in accordance with what a religion “really” requires. The answer will always be that some theological positions within the larger religion require it and some do not. I don’t doubt that some women feel obligated by their religious faith to wear the letterbox, so it’s irrelevant (and pretty much meaningless) to claim that “Islam does not require it.” The argument about freedom of religion is simply, “Do some women subscribe to a body of religious doctrine that requires it?” The answer to that question is obviously, “Yes.”

Now, I tend to agree with Ophelia that this is a red herring. But to the extent that it’s relevant to arguments based on concepts of religious discrimination, we can undoubtedly find women whose theological systems require wearing the burka and who will therefore have to choose between obeying the law and breaching the religious norms that they subscribe to, should the burka be banned. Any kind of investigation of what Islam “really” requires, or what is the “correct” Islamic doctrine on the point, is going to be irrelevant. There’s actually no such thing, anymore than there’s a “correct” Christian doctrine on the meaning of the eucharist or the mechanism of the sacrificial atonement, or anything else. There are numerous Christian positions on all these things.

Jerry is correct that wearing the burka is an Islamic symbol for some people, whether Islam “really” requires it or not. My argument is based on freedom of expression, but one of the things you might want to express is your identity as a Muslim (or your submission to Allah, or your acceptance of a particular tradition of Muslim thought, or whatever). There’s no doubt that some people wish (and even feel obligated) to do that by wearing a burka.

Nussbaum actually does involve herself in deciding what is a “religious obligation” and what is not, in one of her burqa pieces. She’s also always saying how she sees things, “as a Reform Jew,” which kind of gets on my nerves, I suppose because she’s such a shiksa, and she divorced Mr Nussbaum decades ago. The “I’m a reformed Jew” thing seems so pretentious.

But that’s by the way. What I was really going to say was that it seems to make the whole idea of “free exercise” somewhat tricky if it doesn’t matter at all what is a religious obligation and what is not. No not somewhat tricky; more tricky than it already is. If it doesn’t matter, then people can just say anything they want to do is a religious obligation. Even more, they would do that. Some people already do.

My argument is based on freedom of expression, but one of the things you might want to express is your identity as a Muslim (or your submission to Allah, or your acceptance of a particular tradition of Muslim thought, or whatever). There’s no doubt that some people wish (and even feel obligated) to do that by wearing a burka.

I don’t disagree with that claim, but historically religious behaviour has been more strongly protected (at least in North America) than mere “expression”. It’s why, for example, members of the North American Church are legally allowed to use peyote in the US, why believers in faith-healing have traditionally been given huge latitude regarding child endangerment laws, etc. etc. etc. Presumably if these practices were merely cultural, they would not be legally tolerated to the same degree. I am not suggesting that a) the burqa/niqab involve a similar level of violation of majority norms, or b) that the tendency to give religion more of a pass on these issues is appropriate. All I am saying is that in many cases it is very relevant if a practice is genuinely required by a person’s theology.

The coercion is usually more subtle (atleast in progressive societies). The husband/father doesnt say ‘wear the burkha or Ill beat you up’ – Its usually of the form ‘ A good muslim woman will wear it’ or ‘It will make me happy to see you wear it’ or ‘Other Men will respect you if you wear it’ or ‘respectable women wear it’- which if you hear it often enough and see your relatives/ friends wear the burkha as well, as a child, then you are likely to perpetuate the behavior. I don’t know if a public ban will be successful , but I dont see a way out of it.

Well, but Deepak, the law doesn’t ban family members from exerting emotional pressure! In fact it protects their right to do so–that’s free speech. That doesn’t make the pressure good, of course, but do you really think the law should step in and ban people from making self-subjugating religious choices that their families often guilt-trip them into making? If you do, the burqa’s hardly the first place you should start–I would start with the Catholic Church, personally, if I had that mindset.

Besides, as a purely factual matter the evidence suggests that you might be assuming too much. Studies done by the French DCRI and SGDI suggests that most burqa-wearers do so not only voluntarily, but frequently as an act of “provocation” against their families as well as society in generl. They often think they’re being rebellious, not obedient.

Even the right to exert emotional pressure on relatives isn’t total or absolute though. Emotional pressure on very young children not to get life-saving medical care, for example, isn’t really an absolute right (though it’s closer to it than it should be).

It is precisely because one may not advocate laws against the emotional pressures that a family can put on other family members that I support a ban on burkhas in public. It wasn’t I who suggested a domestic police of some sort.

France(and perhaps other Euro countries) is a special case I think because the problem is not widespread, so your studies may be accurate – I’d think however as a matter of principle I’ll still support the ban (atleast for children there must be a ban). My anecdotal views are biased based on what I have seen in India. Again I fully agree that some women may do this voluntarily (especially new converts) and that they should have a right to wear whatever they want to wear and Id prefer this ban be for children who are not of legal age.

[…] had the same problem with the Opinionator articles the book expands on. I wrote about them on July 20, 2010 and July 22, 2010. Maybe I said it all in there, but I’ll say some things before I look to […]